Date: Tue May 07 1996 00:34:38
On page 3, paragraph 2, under the heading "No Known Mechanism of Evolution", Morris says,
"One would think that in the 125 years following Darwin, with thousands of trained biologists studying the problem and using millions of dollars worth of complex lab equipment, they would have worked it out by now, but the mechanism which originates new species is still "the central mystery.""
This bit is interesting from several different angles. First, we do know of a mechanism of speciation, polyploidy, which is observed to operate. This makes the above a lie when linked to the subject heading. Second, I suspect that Morris has no clue as to the demographics of biologists actively engaged in elucidating mechanisms of speciation. There certainly is no indication that either thousands of researchers have contributed to the literature on the topic, nor that the ones who did used esoteric laboratory equipment. Third, Morris again mischaracterizes evolutionary theory, as no one expects there to be some one unique mechanism of speciation.
Date: Tue May 07 1996 00:43:14
On page 3, paragraph 3, Morris says,
'No Fossil Evidence. It used to be claimed that the best evidence for evolution was the fossil record, but the fact is that the billions of known fossils have not yet yielded a single unequivocal transitional form with transitional structures in the process of evolving.
"The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition..." (Steven M. Stanley, 1979a).'
Is there really no fossil evidence of evolution? I suppose that it depends upon what one is willing to call "unequivocal". I suspect that no sequence will receive that label from Henry Morris no matter how clearly it might deserve it. But rather than dwell upon that, let's look at the quote from Stanley, which is illuminative of the level of Morris' intellectual honesty. What Stanley is saying is that the fossil record doesn't contain an instance of a major morphological change occurring *within the same species* over time. That's what "phyletic evolution" is. What Stanley is *not* saying is anything like what Morris says before the quote. Transitional sequences can be, and mostly are, sequences across species. Morris is attempting to make sweeping claims concerning a class of evidence while presenting a quote that deals with a small subset of evidence within that class. How does Morris deal with the evidence of the remainder of the class? By hoping that you won't notice that it exists, that's how. The situation is worse than that, even. Morris says that there are no sequences with "transitional structures", but the Stanley quote dealt with "major morphological transitions". We have yet again another view of Morris bolstering a sweeping claim with a text byte that addresses only a minute fraction of the applicable evidence.
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